India is the prize
Fareed Zakaria notes the same irritating passage in the leaked Gen. McChrystal Afghanistan report, ‘countermeasures’ being a euphemism for blowing up embassies and massacring Mumbaikars in the streets (via @a_blank_slate):In South Asia, the U.S. is the #1 patsy
The more lasting danger is that the Obama administration, now intensely focused on the war in Afghanistan, will look at South Asia largely through that prism. Since Washington desperately needs Pakistan’s cooperation in that conflict, it is tending to adopt Pakistan’s concerns as its own, which is producing a perverse view… Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned that “increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures.” This is a bizarre criticism. India is the hegemon of South Asia… This is like noting that the United States has had growing influence in Mexico over the last few decades… The Indian government’s aid to Afghanistan has mostly gone to build schools and infrastructure…
America can’t and should not want India to banish itself from its own subcontinent… India’s objectives are exactly aligned with America’s–to defeat the Taliban and to support the elected Afghan government… [while] Islamabad has long argued that it has a right to see a pro-Pakistani government in Afghanistan. [Newswk]
It’s all part of the Pakistani military’s protection racket: I create a Potemkin threat, you give me money. In fact, the entire business model of the Pakistani feudal elite is a half-assed shortcut. Rather than funding the military by building their economic base, they cheap out by training jihadis to kill a relative handful of Indian civilians. (11/26 was gruesome and painful, but the death toll doesn’t even rank in the list of preventable Indian deaths. 20 times as many Mumbaikars die crossing train tracks every year.) Actually building Pakistan’s economy would mean the military would have to give up its vise grip on businesses. Feudal landlords would see the rise of nouveau riche competitors. Instead, like Burma or North Korea, they hang tight and starve their people of growth and development, subsisting on U.S. handouts.
The U.S.’ bizarre, irrational Pakistan policy resembles battered spouse syndrome. Rather than cutting out those who create, train and fund terrorists, we’re increasing aid. Rather than backing Indian democracy, we’re gifting Pakistan weapons systems useless against jihadis. Zakaria argues the U.S. military is tunnel-visioned:
Generals like McChrystal–no matter how smart or tough–should not make policy, because they confuse the imperatives of the battlefield with a broader view… South Asia is a tar pit filled with failed and dysfunctional states, save for one long-established democracy of 1.2 billion people that is the second-fastest-growing major economy in the world… The prize is the relationship with India. The booby prize is governing Afghanistan. [Newswk]
The insane cost structure asymmetries of developed vs. developing countries are killing the U.S. war budget. The current 60K troops in Afghanistan cost 100x more than the Afghan government’s annual budget. Over 10 years, Obama’s proposed surge would cost the same as the entire universal health care bill. We’re pissing away money on the war rather than developing Afghanistan. A single soldier who gets paid $35K/yr costs a crazy $1M deployed. Why? Because we buy gold-plated military tech. We pay off the Taliban to allow logistics convoys, raising the cost of military gas to $400 a gallon. We freely fund defense contractor pork. We spend a ridiculous 30% of our budget (including black funds) on security, as if the Canadians were poised on our northern border waiting to invade. Even overmilitarized Pakistan spends half the percentage we do.
If the U.S. paid off all combatants not to fight and withdrew from Afghanistan, we’d save most of the cost. And while we’re pissing our $60B into the wind, the ISI manages to tie up half the U.S military on a fraction of a fraction of the $1B we give them. There’s a popular saying among developing country leftists that the U.S. is the #1 threat to peace. But in South Asia, it’s painfully obvious that we’re the #1 patsy.
Having said that, India and Pakistan should settle Kashmir along the de facto border and demilitarize. War should be an exception condition, not a perpetual state. It’s insane to keep a state a militarized zone for decades on end, blocking economic growth. You don’t see the U.S. going to war against Canada and Mexico: in the long run India’s neighbors should end up its biggest trading partners.
on Monday, November 23rd, 2009, 12:09 pm in Economics, Fareed Zakaria, Military, Politics › 
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I love the way you get all hawkish when it’s India’s defense at issue, while downloading the lefty PC line on all other issues. FOB in the bad way, dude–please to correct. . . .
Deficit hawk = lefty now. Check.
It would be a lot easier for us if the Pakistanis didn’t have nukes.
A Muslim country with nukes isn’t a good thing. It would be worse if extremists got control of that country.
I believe much of our policy with them is driven by that.
By the way, who leaked the report? That person should be arrested as a traitor and get a traitor’s punishment.
We let them have their nukes as payoff for, uh, letting us back the Taliban vs. the Soviets. The CIA knew for years and looked the other way, shutting down a Congressional investigation.
Lots of unseen footage from the attacks last November including security camera footage and portions of interview with Kasab. Can’t find the video online but will post it if I do
Isn’t oil the prize?
The mullahs of the oil dictatorships must be placated. Realistically, India is not as valuable (or garner
much US public support in light of the outsourcing hysteria).
Where Afghanistan is concerned, it never was. We’re only still there as a matter of saving face, and deluded if we think democracy building in a largely Islamic tribal nation is a valid option. The prize now is legitimacy, unless we intend to get into the heroin business.
While I wince at MV’s kneejerk nationalism, I agree that India indispensible to South Asia- culturally, economically, and militarily. Pakistan can’t even manage NWFP much less Afghanistan. Dare I suggest Iran is the obvious ally here?
Your labelism is inaccurate.
I notice that Indians get so excited when some western high official (government or media) says some complimentary things about India. They crave western approval and certification, as Naipual said some decades ago.
But India is in fact a FAILED STATE.
Sorry, my last post got sent out unexpectedly.
Why is India a failed state?
Because after 60 years, the state cannot meet the basic needs of the people. Specifically:
- Income: Nearly 80% (800 million) of the population live on less than Rs 20 a day (under $2 taking account of purchasing power)
- Drinking water & sanitation: Around 40 million households in rural areas do not have a safe source for drinking water and over 100 million rural households live without access to sanitation facilities.
Time magazine reported in 05 Oct 2009 that “110 million households [about 600 million people or 55% of India’s population] remain without access to a toilet and ¾ of the country’s surface water is contaminated by human and agri waste. More than a half a million children die each year from preventable water- and sanitation related diseases like diarrhoea, cholera and hepatitis
- Child mortality: Nearly 6000 children under five die every day in India – one every 15 seconds – the highest number anywhere in the world. More than half die in the month after birth and 400,000 in their first 24 hours. Malnutrition, neonatal diseases, diarrhoea and pneumonia are the major causes of death.
- Diseases: TB is a major public health problem in India; each year over 1.8 million people contract TB and about 450,000 die from it. HIV: over 2.3 million people are infected. Polio: India is one of four countries where polio persists.
- Hunger: On the Global Hunger Index (GHI), a measure of poverty & hunger, India ranks way down at 96 among 119 developing countries included in the report of the Washington Food Institute (Nov 2007). Pakistan was 88, Myanmar 68, China 47.
) According to a UNICEF report (Apr 2006), 40% of the world’s malnourished children are Indians
1 in 2 Indian rural children still go hungry. 70% of the children are anaemic. 6000 children die a day.“
In October 2009, some 150 academics & activists (including N Chomsky) wrote an open letter to PM Manmohan Singh. The following passage was included:
““The post-colonial Indian State, both in its earlier Nehruvian and the more recent neo-liberal variant, has failed miserably to solve the basic problems of poverty, employment and income, housing, primary health care, education and inequality and social discrimination of the people of the country. The utter failure of the development strategy of the post-colonial State is the ground on which the current conflict arises. To recount some well known but oft-forgotten facts, recall that about 77 percent of the Indian population in 2004-05 had a per capita daily consumption expenditure of less than Rs. 20; that is less than US $2 in purchasing power parity terms. According to the 2001 Census, even 62 years after political independence, only about 42 percent of Indian households have access to electricity. About 80 percent of the households do not have access to safe drinking water; that is a staggering 800 million people lacking access to potable water.”
Lots more can be said but this will do.
Check that definition again.
Manish pointed out to the obvious game that Pakistan military plays with foreign “Aid” and he is labelled nationalist??
I am outraged at the “Aid” given to Pakistan also, because I am paying taxes and Pakistan military is playing us for fools.
Our “Aid” is used by the ISI to spread terror against our forces. Also used in India to spread terror.
As far as Kashmir is concerned, Pakistan has no incentive to accept the LoC as a final border because Kashmir is just an excuse for them to spread terror in India.
Instead of trying to save relations with Pakistan which uses terror as a foreign policy tool (where majority people hate the US) the US should focus on increasing their positive engagement with India.
Even Iran suffered a terrorist attack by terrorists based in Pakistan. Besides India, I am on record here to have said long ago, that closer ties to Iran should be cultivated. They are a natural fit.
You should read what Naipaul said about Pakistan. Oh boy.
Perhaps. Is Pakistan-hating more accurate?
Even wider of the mark I reckon.
Why don’t you address the points he makes, instead of flipping out boring ad hominem?
Can you back up your Tourette’s with a quote, DP? Or are you more of a spray-and-pray type.
A reasonable assessment… but many of your facts are wrong:
- Rs. 20 was not equal to $2 the last 20 years. That would be closer to Rs. 70-100.
-India’s Global Hunger Index is 65 . That’s a reduction of 30 places in 4 years even if your statistic was true for 2005 (doubtful).
-The letter you cite from Chomsky is about multi-national companies exploiting the poor without adequate compensation. It doesn’t have the passage you excerpt.
In light of your damning assessment of India, the hysteria surrounding the economic “rise” of India is like getting worked up over an emaciated parched man drinking a few drops out of a discarded canteen in the middle of a blazing hot day. It’s interesting that multi-national companies are driving the economic development in India/China as opposed to Western governmental economic largess.
There is a bias against the Pakistani government in this blog. So what? Doesn’t the evidence suggest it is corrupt, inept, venal, untrustworthy, etc.? MV has been critical of governments and policies not of countries or people IMHO.